What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a seventh portmanteau post on television of course!

Hannibal

Sky Living is trailing the hell out of its new show Hannibal; starting May 7th, in case you didn’t know. The cast is certainly imposing: Morpheus Laurence Fishburne as an FBI director who convinces his top profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) to consult with a brilliant psychiatrist Dr Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), and, once introduced, together they fight crime. But the premise of the show feels more than a bit familiar. Future deadly nemeses, one a storied super-villain of sorts, are the best of friends in the undocumented years before they come into celebrated and chronicled conflict. It’s Smallville, basically…

Confuse a Jools

This is the first season of Later…with Jools Holland in its new studio in Maidstone, Kent. And it appears that the shift of location from central London has addled proceedings considerably. The old title sequence with its delightful ‘Jools no longer on the Tube’ in-joke has regrettably had to be ditched owing to no longer making a lick of sense; being as it was Jools’ adventures using bus, tube and taxi to make it to the studio in time when his own car breaks down. But now the new title sequence takes a virtual tour of the studio naming the bands featured in the episode and to hell with the traditional group riff played by all the musicians as the camera circles the room with the names of the bands popping up. Except now the group riff is played at the end, after the biggest act’s showstopped…

Herb Shriner 1 – Craig Doyle 0

DVD as a format throws up some gloriously random things as extras, none more so than an episode of a 1950s TV show on which Orson Welles appears for a few minutes as a feature on a 5 disc set of Welles films. The 2nd ever episode of The Herb ShrinerShow from 1956 is the episode in question. What’s startling, especially after watching Conan, is just how early in the game the format was nailed. Shriner begins with a monologue making fun of the presidential race between Eisenhower and Stevenson, and mocks Elvis, and even, very Conan, self-deprecatingly joshes his own show. Add a comedy cheerleading musical number, a sketch about small-town life in Indiana, and a celebrity guest (Welles, who’s there to recite some Carl Sandburg poetry and trade barbed Mid-Western insults with Shriner) and you have a show. American television networks nailed this format a few years after their creation, yet Craig Doyle faffs about on RTE about apparently clueless. Here’s a helpful tip: never tape the show live! Record it in the afternoon, before anyone in the audience gets drunk, so that they don’t heckle the guests or the host.